It wasn’t Gilbert’s exercise regime that disturbed Emma’s sleep that night. It wasn’t even the phantom pings of longed-for messages on her phone. Instead it was movement and voices overhead, a dance of disquiet that suggested the Harlows’ world had not settled back to normal since Steph’s fraught phone calls earlier in the evening.
Emma probably wouldn’t have been sleeping, anyway. Lately her worries were as nocturnal as her hamster, her brain churning with images that would make her reach for the notepad next to her bed, drawing them in thick pen-strokes to try to purge them. She’d always been a compulsive doodler. A scribble in the corner of her schoolwork would escalate into a carnival of figures or a catalog of designs. But, just like back then, there was a spiky anxiousness to the faces and shapes she now sketched.
She kicked her duvet aside and snatched her dressing gown from its hook. Her phone told her it was ten past midnight. As she padded through her flat, the night turned her furniture into crouching lumps, her framed photos into colorless oblongs and squares. The rattle of Gilbert’s wheel mingled with the sounds from above, creating the impression that he was controlling the neighbors’ conversation, cranking it up, like an organ grinder.
She hesitated at the under-stairs cupboard. Told herself she was simply checking on her pet. When she opened the cage Gilbert didn’t even pause, trawling onward as though he had targets to reach. There was nothing else to do once she’d topped up his water (and marveled at his total indifference to her), but Emma didn’t move.
The voices were audible here. As clear as Steph’s had been earlier. There were four now, though: Steph’s and Paul’s were so familiar to her, but different tonight, distorted by anxiety, and it didn’t take long to work out that the other two were police. A shiver rolled down Emma’s spine. She hadn’t been aware of the police arriving: She must’ve slept for a while after all. She’d heard Paul get home around eight thirty p.m.—car door slamming, footsteps shaking the stairs—and she’d been drawn again toward the cupboard: Would he have news of Freya? What would he and Steph say to each other? Would they be pragmatic or panicked, bickering or united? Then her phone had beeped and she’d spun toward the sound, boomeranging back to her own life.
Only to be disappointed. It hadn’t been the text she’d hoped for. Instead it was an email from one of her favorite suppliers, Mimi, who earned her living trawling antiques fairs and had sold Emma some incredible finds over the years. That jade-green beret with the flame-gold silk lining. The authentic flapper dress with pearls sewn into the black fabric, like stars in folds of night. Emma hadn’t yet confessed to Mimi that she’d had to close her shop—or that there might be a delay in paying her final invoice. So she was still offering her things, this time a collection of 1940s Bakelite bangles in citrus shades. Emma had touched her wrists, imagining the feel of them clinking together along her arm, lime green against burnt orange against sunshine yellow. She knew just how to polish them up, how to stack them asymmetrically for display. Then she’d snapped back to reality, closing down the photo Mimi had sent. Suddenly she’d felt cold and exhausted and had dragged herself to bed without even cleaning her teeth.
Next time she’d woken she’d felt the change in the building. A sense that the top part of the house was vividly awake. Usually at this hour there was just her dead-of-the-night worries and the yowls of the neighborhood tomcats. Now there was drama from above, a seductive diversion from her thoughts.
“I suppose she’s been a bit . . . short with me lately,” Steph was saying. “But she’s been stressed about her mocks, and this big tournament . . .”
“Have you noticed her acting unusually, Mr. Harlow?”
“Not really.” Paul’s voice had a squeezed quality to it. “But I admit I’ve been kind of distracted myself.”
“Any particular reason?”
“You know . . . work . . . life . . .”
Emma thought of how self-contained Paul often looked when jogging alone by the river, arms pumping at his sides. So different from when he was running loose-limbed with Freya, or laughing as they got into the car. But the same could be said for Steph, when caught unawares. Emma had several times glimpsed her entrenched in thought, blinking out of a reverie when her daughter or husband appeared.
Emma’s chin jerked when she heard Paul add, “Sweetheart . . . can I talk to the officers alone?”
He’d spoken so quickly she wasn’t sure she’d heard right. The answering silence felt leaden, even from a floor below.
“What?” Steph sounded shocked. “Why?”
“There’s something I need to discuss with them.”
“Then discuss it with me too!”
“Steph—”
“I’m your wife! Freya’s our daughter! This isn’t the time to—”
“I know.” Paul’s voice was wound even tighter. “Except . . . I need to.”
Emma imagined what was happening in the spell of quiet that followed. Paul reaching toward Steph, trying to placate her? Steph staring at him in confusion? She could only picture Steph in her suit and Paul in his dark running gear.
“Will you excuse us a moment, Officers?” Steph’s usual polite tone was suddenly back.
One of the PCs said, “Of course.” Then there were footsteps followed by more quiet. Emma strained to hear if the police would say anything while Steph and Paul were presumably out of the room. The officers talked in lower voices about how they ought to proceed, given that they couldn’t record Freya as missing for another sixteen hours. “Is something going on here, though,” one of them hissed, only just audible, “with the parents?”
Before they could say more, the footsteps returned. Except one set kept moving, over Emma, until the slam of a door made the whole house quiver. A louder crash and a startled cry had her leaping up, banging her head. The noise had seemed to come from the stairs, or the hall. She scrambled out of the cupboard and dashed to her front door. Steph was sprawled at the bottom of the staircase, one hand flung against the wall, her fingers as white as the emulsion behind.
“Oh, God—are you all right?”
Steph just lay there, her body at one awkward angle, her head at another. She’s snapped her neck, Emma thought in sheer panic. Relief coursed through her (with a snatch of her mum’s voice accusing her of a dramatic imagination) when Steph sat up and began touching her face. Emma realized her neighbor was on the verge of tears: the kind jolted out by a slip or a shock but rooted in something else. Her cardigan had dropped off her shoulders and a large tortoiseshell hair clasp had landed on the stair behind her, its black teeth facing up.
Emma stepped closer. “Are you hurt?”
Steph seemed dazed. The foyer lightbulb flickered, adding to the surreal atmosphere. “I don’t think so.” She prodded at her ear and her finger came away stained with blood. Emma had a strange flash of déjà vu, but before she could pin it down, the door to the upstairs flat opened.
“Steph?” came Paul’s voice. His shadow stretched the length of the stairs, elongated by some trick of the light. “Shit, are you all right?”
Steph stared ahead, her eyes pink. “I slipped.”
“You’re bleeding!” Paul rushed down toward her. He was wearing work clothes, but with no shoes, his shirt crumpled. He stalled when he noticed they had company and Emma felt him taking in her blue, bed-matted hair, the Z tattooed on her ankle. Her dressing gown suddenly felt tiny and transparent, like a nightmare in which she realized she was naked in public.
Paul’s eyebrows knitted but he turned away from her, reaching for Steph’s shoulders. “Darling—”
Steph moved so his hands grasped the air. “Leave it, Paul. Go back to your private discussion.”
“Please, Steph. I know it looks bad . . .” As Paul implored his wife he glanced again at Emma, a look that made her feel like an intruder. She began to retreat into her own flat. Before the door swung closed, she saw Paul leaning toward Steph, and Steph jerking away, drawing up her knees, like a threatened creature curling into a ball.
Something flamed in Emma. A kind of recognition. Her heart boomed as she leaned against the inside of her door, failing to make out their murmuring voices. After a few minutes she turned the latch and opened it a crack. But the foyer was empty, the lightbulb still flickering, Steph’s hair clasp lying on the stairs with wisps of blonde hair in its jaw.